So, I woke up early today. It was a bargain I made with my other self, my other side. If I ever want to break out of this fixed hold I am in I have to change the way I approach things. This was after a deep sleep and a realization that I am not just myself; I am more than me. You can look at this knowledge as a burden, to know what you went through and did in your souls past. It can be hard to wrap your head around. But once you come to peace with who you are, it becomes less of a burden, and more of an incentive to try harder and do better.
To me, he was a very strong man, in control of his life. Then he became my strength and along with it I was gifted his guilt, and I had to reconcile with him as well as his past, and mine. He has had much the same experience as I have had, although because of the place and time he was he was able to react to it differently then I am. He is my inspiration and focus, to work harder and better and not let other peoples agendas get to me as much as they would in the past.
He still yearns for his life, but he knows he has his own life; the simultaneous one he lives now. And maybe I am what he is for me in this life, I am his Jiminy Cricket is his head as he is in mine.
No matter. I am up at 6am to write, to hone my skills and to use every day to improve, strive and change; regardless of anything standing in my way. Echo must be done right. For the past few days, this has been on the forefront of my mind. That and whenever I try to sleep, lately he is up, working on what happened in a gun battle. He has been trying to get me back there, and I might have gone there ever briefly. To the point, the men with him may think he is quite cracked by now.
He misses a friend, one he only rode with for eight months, simply because we, years ago, had found a man who claimed to be this person at this present time. When he is here for too long he gets very lonely, we are lonely for someone who knows our experience of this baffling state of existence. I have found good friends who tend to say they believe my story, but who is to say what their true motivations of that are.. to keep the peace, to learn more, or to truly want to understand.
I think we, he and I, are cursed, or burdened with this task of knowing ourselves this well. If they are out there, still, and if we should run into them again I think they might be jealous, to think we have figured ourselves out so well. And instead of hiding our true nature, we are free and open about who we truly are. Echo is an amalgamation of the two lives ‘we’ are living now. With luck, it will help others know their true selves as well.
I came out of the reincarnated closet last week. Friends and family who I share my life with and love completely, don’t know. And yet here I am, telling co-workers I have known for a few months. To be fair I work at a very open-minded place, a college for the study of Oriental medicine; and within these confines, there are different belief systems then the ordinary; not that they teach that there but I know they are an integral part of it. The first time I mentioned it to a teacher and now a friend told me that she has dealt with a past life situation and that took me by surprise. She adjusted to it and came through it well. But I didn’t go into detail about her experience or mine. It was only after I allowed ‘him’ to be in the driver’s seat to help me change my life that he didn’t see a problem with telling these people in my life. They all took it in stride, seeing the resemblance in the tintypes, and verifying it with there own past life experiences. He is happy to be known and is feeling more connected to the present now as well as the past.
He was known in his day and is dealing with the frustration of hero worship that undermined his notorious reputation. But that is something we can remedy in time, in this life.. as we progress with all of this.